I was like that with psychic powers myself.
If you can't solve a problem with telepathy or bio-lightning then you need more telepathy or bio-lightning.
My brother's group always liked unloading autocannons at anything and everything. Tough enemy? Autocannons. Tough door? Autocannons. Being impeded by bureacrats? Autocannon based intimidation.
"This is my fast lane pass. It costs 250,000 thrones to use it for twelve seconds. Some people think they can outsmart me. Maybe. But I have yet to meet bureaucrat who can outsmart fast lane pass."
There's one book, I think the anarchist's cookbook, which recommends gelignite for lockpicking, on the basis that lockpicks are only useful if you don't want people to know you were there.
Or you're some lockpickinglayweresque rogue who breaks into people's secure places unseen and undetected, only to leave a calling card and mysterious message in Victorian flower language
Here's the thing about making them outlaws....all you need is another Inquisitor with a hard on for taking them down. Inquisitors can be independent operators with their own resources pools and "the Inqusition" isn't organized or monolithic enough to manage them each individually. So if what they did CAN look like heresy to an Inquisitor, you have an easy foil for them. And nothing in 40k makes for better villainy than blowing up someone's homeworld out of a misguided sense of justice.
The original plan:-Lord Inquisitor Gosvinger is a real human bean. Salt of the earth chap who ended up in the Inquisition fighting daemons. Rose to the top of the Rosarius ladder because he was very, very good at fighting daemons. Is known to be at least over five hundred years old and in that time has gotten very jaded. Real Ordo Malleus "kill anyone who knows what a daemon is" hours. But the reason he's gotten so jaded is that in that time, he's had a lot of repeat customers. Seen the exact same daemons banished over and over again.
I'm setting my campaign in 40k (literally year 40,009) so Oblationists don't (ostensibly) exist yet, but Xanthites are still going strong, and Gosvinger led the prosecution of a Xanthite colleague who praised the merits of using sorcery, daemonology and warpcraft to permanently destroy daemons. Gosvinger's point of view is that people like his Xanthite colleague believed they could defeat chaos whilst carving chaos into their own flesh and blood, metaphorically and literally.
But the seed of a terrible idea has been stuck in his head since. And he's been secretly cultivating a network of radical allies devoted to the revivifactor faction, who study the nature of the "soul" in 40k.
The original game plan was:
On the planet Erebuni, in the Amaranthine wastes, Magos Octus Divinatus of the Alchemys division was conducting extremely dangerous research into transmutation of materia and immateria. Magos Octus conducted experiments like creating the apopstosic circuit - which was a maltek device which just summoned daemons and vaporized them over and over again, in search of a surefire method to permanently eliminate daemons. Besides some dabbling in xenophase technology and standard Alchemys transmaterial shenanigens, Magos Octus also discovered the sacred right of eightfold division (how to divide their brain into eight parts and give each one a complete, identical mechanical body of true iron flesh - without destroying their soul), as well as the basics of soul forging (capturing, using and binding souls). They do not know what they're doing is soul forging, but it most certainly is. Whilst Gosvinger was aware of Magos Octus's maltek research, neither he nor the Mechanicus nor anyone besides Octus's most trusted savants were aware they had divided themselves eightfold.
Magos Octus was hitting a wall though, in that they were struggling to create shells capable of hosting more potent warp spirits - as weak spirits burn up / can't defend themselves against daemonic possession, and stronger spirits burn the shells up / go insane. By pure chance, almost fate even, in the Amaranthine wastes, buried under layers of Rangdan/Slaugth xenoruins is an ancient archaeotech ship, the UNS Mission of Hope, that is equipped with an AI medical wing capable of constructing bodies that are a) soulless b) capable of withstanding the warp's energies.
In the Sargassan triangle is a ship graveyard which includes an armada worth of ships dating back to the Storm of the Emperor's wrath. The Sargassan triangle is a dead space where the light of the astronomicon, even the eye of terror is strangely absent, and anyone who has ventured too deep or tried to cross it has never returned. The Deathwatch knows there are xenos empires beyond the triangle, the Ecclesiarchy believes a missionary ship which ventured into it made contact with human empires beyond the triangle, but no one knows for sure.
Recently, something changed. There is a small light at the end of the triangle. A few daring chartist captains and smugglers have already begun salvaging the outlying wrecks. The Slaugth, working through the Amaranthine syndicate, spent a lot of ships and men to find the ship graveyard, as it contains Rangda bioships they wish to reclaim. One of their smuggler ships returned, with the crew entirely slain. The holds were full of cargo from one of these lost space hulks. The Slaugth masquerade as a trade cartel and are more than happy to give the Imperium a metric crap ton of cursed and highly potent heavy weaponry, so they did exactly that.
The Amaranthine Syndicate sold the very haunted weapons cache to various criminal gun-runner groups. These weapons inevitably aroused the attention of Lord Jack Wilter. Lord Jack Wilter, the Lord of Erebuni's refinery district. A >400 year old noble who fought his way up from foreman to Lord, and was an ardent convert to the Temple Tendency heresy - which believes the current Ecclesiarchy to be illegitimate and the Vandire era ecclesiarchy the one true faith. Whereas Gosvinger is over five centuries old and still in his prime, Jack could only afford/access enough rejuvenat and bionic treatment to sustain himself. As such he spent all of his days infirm, in a hermetically sealed life support chamber, with all the time in the world spent just planning the Temple of the Saviour's return. When news of authentic mastercrafted carapace armour, power weapons and plasma weapons with the Temple of the Saviour's iconography on it being sold in fire sales reached his ears, he snapped down on it hard and bought all he could through underhive gangers. These underhive gangers were spotted fielding this weaponry and even arco-flagellant support from Lord Jack Wilter, by underhive gangers which later allied to the Ordo Hereticus (this is one of the few pieces of actual evidence the players did discover). From this, Jack Wilter learned that the location of the spaceship graveyard had been found, alerting Gosvinger.
Jack Wilter and the Arch Deacon Kaefor Lamarr, planned to stage a planetary purge of Ecclesiarchal forces, kill the planetary governor and install a pawn as the new Lord Governor. This would cause enough chaos for Magos Octus to extract the UNS Mission of Hope without being noticed, bolster the strength of the Temple of the Saviour, and be followed up by the second phase. The location of the spaceship graveyard would be sought, the derelict ships recommissioned and a true loyal fleet would arise from the ashes to burn the heretics once more.
Gosvinger has no love for the Ecclesiarchy (it's the one institution he is on ambivalent terms with, thanks to his radical views on the nature of the soul diverging from Ecclesiarchal doctrine). But he's also ambivalent towards it. His real goal is not the weapons caches or the ships - but the souls within the ships. With shells from the UNS Mission of Hope and souls from the Storm of the Emperor's Wrath, he believes this is his best shot at creating spirit hosts - beings like daemon hosts, but inhabited by zealous and potent souls dragged from the immaterium and bound to the material world. Beings which could kill daemons permanently.
If this works, his next step, and most dangerous, would be to try and create a body powerful enough to host the soul of the God Emperor of mankind.
Where it all went terribly wrong1. Inquisitor Mordaunt was getting suspicious.
2. The assassination attempt on Mordaunt's life failed. Though much of what followed can be publically blamed on Magos Octus, who has no definitive links proven to Gosvinger at all (the players have destroyed all the evidence), they still have a smoking gun - someone else killed Mordaunt's pilots with a psyker attack.
3. The Lord Governor of Erebuni, who was a cooperative associate of Gosvinger, ended up aligning himself fully with the Ordo Hereticus. Gosvinger's plan to use both the Lord Governor and Wilter to sow chaos failed when the Lord Governor decisively won in a pre-emptive strike. The Lord Governor is under the impression that the Inquisition is a monolithic entity and isn't aware that the Ordo Malleus and Hereticus Inquisitors on his planets are not on good terms. What he is certain of though, is that the Hereticus saved his rule. Now he has greatly expanded the draft and reinforced every corner of the planet with guardsmen and PDF troopers loyal to him - and by extension, loyal to the Ordo Hereticus.
4. The Cult of Gellar, an unknown factor in Gosvinger's equation, have entered the scene and witnessed Octus's tech heresy.
5. The Lord Governor's forces have violated Mechanicum sovereignty and also witnessed the tech heresy.
6. It can be proven Gosvinger and Wilter were associates who communicated with one another.
7. The Order of the Valorous Heart has given their political support to their daughter mission, the Order of the Furious Angel. The direct military and political support of the Order of the Terrible Swift Maul makes this even messier. Declaring one inquisitor and their retinue heretic/traitors on trumped up charges or fabricated evidence might be possible. Engaging an entire battlefleet of sororitas without ironclad evidence would get himself branded a traitor, something he would only do at a last resort. Worse still, his goal is to secure the UNS Mission of Hope, which is still buried in the Amaranthine wastes. Bombarding the planet could destroy the ship.
The Rogue Trader and his fleet also present another problem, as not only is he going to defend the Order of the Terrible Swift Maul, but his navigator has seen the light and his master of whispers heard the rumours and even collected samples of the weapons cache - and him claiming the ship graveyard and selling it to the Imperial Navy of battlefleet Gothic would just brick all of his plans, as once battlefleet Gothic fills a warship with their crew and stations it at Cadia's gate... Any outsider Lord Inquisitor requesting one of their ships will be politely informed they have more pressing needs for the ships.
8. The Ordo Xenos, Ordo Hereticus and other Ordo Malleus inquisitors are watching. If Gosvinger unduly escalates, it attracts more attention. This will also include Lord Inquisitors from the other two Ordos. This is a particular problem since the players have at this point been lauded for leading a planetary crusade against heresy, and recognised by the Ordo Xenos for suppressing a heretek warp incursion and assisting with the xenos problem.
Planning the Plan for the new PlanGosvinger has called for a formal conclave to deal with the Sargassan Triangle issue. This will be the Sargassan Conclave, and a tripartite coalition of the three Ordos will share information and resources on how to find the ship graveyard and whether it should be destroyed or reutilised. Inter-service friction will also be formally addressed, with formal censures issued over the lack of communication and the apparent quantity of acolytes both sides have lost...
Officially, Gosvinger will strive for a clean slate. He will sit back and observe the situation and from the information he/his acolytes have:
1. They will know that no one has provided any evidence linking him to Octus or Wilter. There is only circumstantial evidence linking him to Wilter. He will have to race to find the sole surviving Lady of the Wilter House before the players do, as she may know something, and was the only one who escaped the fall of the Refinery palace. The loss of the entire Wilter House is terrible, and Gosvinger was personal friends with Wilter, but this will not set him back much.
2. Magos Octus being compromised will shake Gosvinger's confidence considerably. The idea that one iteration of the Magos would grow a conscience and confess to a hereticus inquisitor will freak the hell out of him, and make him distrust the surviving 7 pieces of Octus. One of the surviving pieces of Octus is leading the excavation of the UNS Mission of Hope, so this will cause... Friction. Inquisitor Mordaunt did not learn anything of use from the guilty Octus (they were attacked by assassins and daemons before any substantial conversation could occur), but Gosvinger does not know how much he knows or not...
3. Gosvinger is dealing with Chaos in addition to everything else. Forge World Torus was just attacked by a schismatical scrap code virus which infected people's augmentations and machines, led by an arch-heretek named Halobates. The fact that one of the pieces of Octus was on Forge World Torus and disappeared will cause immense concern to Gosvinger.
4. Arch-Deacon Kaefor Lamarr is surrounded by Ordo Hereticus people and knows too much.
The solution I think would make the most sense is; things are bad. Make the most of a bad situation.
1. Arch-Deacon Kaefor Lamarr will be personally told he is being brought under Ordo Malleus protection. In reality, he will be found dead, killers unknown.
2. The hunt for Magos Octus will ensue, with Gosvinger attempting to have the hunt be conducted by Malleus-Mechanicus forces he can rely on to not ask questions and kill the heretek.
3. Claim custody of the UNS Mission of Hope and the ship graveyard before the other Ordos/factions can.
4. Deal with Mordaunt's retinue in a sneaky breeki way.
The surprises in stall for everyone-Five of the pieces of Octus have turned to chaos. The remaining two can feel the other five trying to corrupt them (as they still share a soul). The one in the Amaranthine Wastes is trying to overpower the AI controlling the UNS Mission of Hope to create a Nihilus Divinatus, a being which has all the memories of Octus but none of its soul - a blank slate. The other Octus is messing about with technology to separate soulstuff from materialstuff, allying with the Dark Eldar to capture Eldar and their wraithbone/soulstone technology.
-Magos Octus is an incredible unknown quantity. Even their primary co-conspirateurs do not know the full extent of their work, or even such basic things as their original identity/gender/affiliations with illicit groups.
Primus (judgement, ambition, coordination) = Full warpsmith. Considers all of its other pieces to be inferior to it, and is a pseudo-Phaenonite in the making
Secunda (schizoid, alert, independent) = Trying to build their own soulstone / soul fortress to partition themself from the rest
Tertia (paranoid, foresight, schizophrenic) = Tzeentch has blessed Tertia with visions of the future. All at once. They won't stop. Why won't they stop.
Quartus (patience, intellectual, speech) = Khorne improved Quartus. They remain patient, intellectual and eloquent at speech and mimicry. However they have been twisted into a horrifying, stalking predator...
Quintilla (wakefulness, conscious control of involuntary functions, resentment) = Trying to build Nihilus and escape themselves
Sextus (pain, heat, movement, emotions) = Slaanesh called dibs on Sextus. No matter how many times they repair, remove or replace their sensory components, their mind is always telling them that their core components are in extreme pain and are overheating. Sextus Divinatus has learned to scream in agony at the steel that itches
Septimus (depression, smell, memory) = Nurgle embraced Septimus, who calls themselves Centimus as they have since turned into a giant mechanical centipede. They think life is okay now
Octus (fear, anxiety, guilt, conscience) = Dead. Tried to come clean
-Chaos has been following Gosvinger's career with interest for five centuries, like demented linkedin scouts. The chaos gods, Tzeentch in particular, are very interested in getting Gosvinger in a situation where he is forced down a corrupt path, and forced into their palms. Slaanesh and Nurgle want to seize control of the UNS Mission of Hope (Slaanesh wants it to make new forms, Nurgle wants to corrupt the potent medical wing). Khorne has been attacking the other three, because he likes Gosvinger the way he is. They haven't been able to do much given the weakness of the immaterium in this subsector, but thanks to their new Magos friends and the creation of the apostosic circuit, now they can cause real havoc.
-Angry heretic warp ghosts and spirit hosts are an inherently volatile and unknown danger to basically everyone involved.
-A warband of Chaos Space Marines, involving Night Lords, Thousand Sons, Iron Warriors and Death Guard have noticed the highly unusual activity in the Sargassan triangle and have already sent out some raiding groups from the Eye of Terror to investigate.
The New Plan-I'm guessing the players plotline will still revolve around dealing with heretics. Which in the short term lets me ignore the Slaugth end game (I'm guessing whatever nefarious stuff they'll be doing will be left to the Ordo Xenos and they won't be doing anything... Too apocalyptic...?). I'm guessing the Slaugth end game would be something suitably evil like creating a slave empire or something from outside the triangle, as a spearhead to begin an invasion within the Imperium
-Gosvinger is going to try and use his authority to give the players bait they may actually take, e.g. hunt down one of the Chaos Divinatus. This lets him wage a secret war on Quintilla Divinatus for the UNS Mission of Hope. Given the extreme sandstorms/thunderstorms over the area, it is possible to conduct a landing without auspex scanners or interlopers observing.
At the same time, the most nefarious plan I can think of is Gosvinger calling upon the Grey Knights to assist in the purge. So far the players have managed to destroy all evidence of major warp nonsense before the Ordo Malleus could discover them.
But if they were to have the players attack a full blown Apopstosic circuit breach fighting alongside the Grey Knights, they would have a justifiable reason to turn on them and have them all killed (for both chaos corruption + knowledge of Grey Knights). The wider Ordos Inqusitors would react with an "oh that's terrible but we'll put memorials on their graves, they were good martyrs." Notably, I'm setting this campaign before the first war for armageddon (which is when the Space Wolves taught the Grey Knights that killing everyone you just fought to save gets you an axe to the face). So the newer lore of Grey Knights preferring to mind-wipe people unless they really have to kill them doesn't apply here. Even more dastardly if the Chaos Octus they are attacking is somehow warned in advance of the players' attack, leading to them being ambushed twice over.
pros: -it is a seriously dastardly scheme which preserves his reputation, even if the scheme fails it's hard to pin the blame on him if the Grey Knights are purge happy
-this is the first time Space Marines have ever featured in my campaign and my players are ascension level murder machines with extensive military support. I... Think... They could handle a Grey Knight ambush...?
cons: -if it backfires, Grey Knights could get pissed off with Gosvinger and come after him. But I think in his hubris/confidence he wouldn't consider this possibility
-whole plan is harder to implement if the players won't take the bait and lunge after a suitably daemonic threat the Grey Knights consider worthy of deployment
Backup plans-Fuck up their ship's Gellar field. I like this one and may include it as a plot point because they actually got the Cult of Gellar on their side. I would love to reward my players for managing this feat by just mentioning that the Cult of Gellar inspected their ship and found sabotage. The involvement of Gellar field enthusiasts is also something that Gosvinger would not have been able to predict.
-Utilise radical acolytes / co-opted cults to do all sorts of horrible acts of very noisy sabotage. Mutant uprisings, chaos cult uprisings. Things that look very dangerous but pose no threat to the Imperium (e.g. the players get reports of a massive cult plot and then it just turns out to be a bunch of edgy upper hive nobles roleplaying as recidivists and wannabe cultists with forbidden lore, they do not in fact have). Just dropping red herrings everywhere on purpose. Inquisitors may have their fair share of murderhobos but you don't reach Lord Inquisitor without honestly believing somewhere that your ends will justify your means.
-It would be pretty funny if they ended up chasing an Istvaanian who 100% would provoke real mutant uprisings and real chaos cult uprisings on purpose, who claims that the fake sabotage couldn't be them because they would've really armed the mutants.
-TEN EVERSOR ASSASSINS (and one Vindicare). For when you have literally given up and you just want to tie up all loose ends. Maybe not ten eversor assassins. I don't think my players could survive that
-Fuck it. Full blown Inquisitor War. Doomsday weapons, armies, fleets, everything goes to absolute hell until the Calixis sector Inquisitors show up with ten million space marines and kill everyone for getting too silly
-Use Mechanicus forces to clean up any lasting evidence of his shenanigens. He has trusted, powerful Mechanicus allies and the Mechanicus has a vested interest in dealing with hereteks in-house and avoiding the Ordo Hereticus infringing on its autonomy.
-Whilst Gosvinger may not use daemons or chaos cults against the players... What if one of his Inquisitorial proteges felt with a wink wink, nudge nudge, they could do what their Lord could not?
-[insert blank space here]
-Force through a formal censure forbidding them from continuing their witch hunt, revoking their Inquisitorial privileges, do everything to just politically neuter them or bog them down in appeals and trials. Could backfire though.
-Just really big boom on top of the players. Huge boom.
-Strand them on a death world...?
I'm out of backup plans. Idk if the Deathwatch would get involved in this. They might if they end up crossing paths with Secunda Divinatus. I'll worry about that headache when it comes up XD
I feel this. In my Rogue Trader campaign the answer to almost every problem for them was "melta gun." They made it standard kit for the captain's House Guard.
I rate the meltagun up there with the rocket launcher for "best common heavy weapon for PCs." Fighting tank? Meltagun. Fighting xenos? Melta gun. Horde of infantry? Meltagun. Power armoured enemies? Meltagun!
Got to say I've also been having a blast with the Rogue Trader video game. It's a very faithful adaptation of the TTRPG somewhat let down by the ungodly quantity of loading screens. If they sorted out the loading screens I would rate it as a superb - mechanically, spiritually, it's fantastic. I could feel the utter love when I realised in your ship, one of the rooms has a really sick organ sound track. It only plays when the man on the organ is actually playing the organ.
This is 100% accurate and canon
My only gripe with the game mechanically, is they do that sort of good boy / bad boy points system, but with dogmatic (imperium 4 lyfe), heretic (give me that warp crack) and iconoclast (I value human lives somewhat). The system... Is defined well, but sucks in practice.
The setting and writing fleshes out each of the three schools with immense depth, but they don't let the player actually engage in that depth. A lot of dialogue options are paradoxically locked behind tiers of your alignment, so the more dogmatic you are, the more dogmatic options you get, et cetera.
This sucks when the characters dabbling in chaos run the whole breath of "chaos is just a means to an end, I will help people with whatever tools I have" to "chaos is the truth I seek, I obey the will of chaos" and "I am the will to power, chaos bends to my will." There is a whole Inquisition subplot centering around whether it's okay to use the tools of the archenemy to fight the archenemy. You can partake in that discussion... If you've already wholeheartedly embraced chaos. Things are very backwards where you are not allowed to use chaos artifacts until you are sufficiently heretic. You are not allowed to be tempted to chaos, lured by its power, unless you have already proven yourself as an arch-heretic.
Dogmatic and iconoclast end up clashing a lot too, as dogmatic is defined as upholding the Imperium's prejudices and institutions at all costs. Even for 40k's extreme hyperbole, this gets taken to absurd lengths, where you can't be dogmatic and also value humans. It becomes dogmatic to just routinely mass servitorise entire populations. Without spoilering too much, there is a point where you are given the choice to either be a naughty iconoclastic rogue trader, or be a good dogmatic rogue trader and side with someone who eats people's brains in public, taking copious amounts of drugs to kill heretics for such crimes as breaking curfew searching for food or wasting their time pleading for innocence. The game makes a whole point about how the setting patronises Saint Drusus, the saint of redemption, and multiple characters in your retinue who are dogmatic to the core are all about protecting normal people and redeeming those who stray from Imperial dogma. And then you get dogmatic points for betraying all those ideals and get iconcoclast points for actually upholding the Imperium's laws
Iconoclast isn't as bad as heretic or dogmatic for gatekeeping breadth of options, but it does happen. E.g. sometimes you get the option to do something that will result in a lot of people dying in a [heretic] way or a [dogmatic] way but not iconcolastic way. This can get really absurd to points where there are no iconoclast options for getting revenge on people who 10000% tried torturing everyone you love to death, because that's not merciful I guess...?
Spoiler alert:
you even get a point where it's an iconoclast option to spare a genestealer cult after you learn what genestealer cults are and they nearly wiped out your entire ship and stole your mind. There's being merciful and then there's being lawful stupid. There should 100% be an iconoclast option of "I love you bro but... Seriously? You've killed so many people, nearly killed me and will kill so many more. I've got to finish what you started". I hope they sort that out for rogue trader 2 because it gets more glaring the more you think about it. Ideally they would replace it with just a bunch of flags, especially since good boy / bad boy points system comes with all the other problems of "how many points is xyz worth." E.g. if you're dogmatic, imperium thuggin' and don't have time for your own precious unsanctioned psyker... Handing her in to the Inquisition gives you less dogmatic points than trying to help her and then killing her. If you're a chaos boyz, commanding a forge fiend and binding it to your will is about as naughty as killing xenos... But for yourself, not for the Emperor, or letting pirates go (but not in a merciful iconoclast way, in an evil, sinister merciful heretic way)
Some of the endings as well are just really grimderp. Grimdark for the sake of grimdark. I'll avoid major spoilers but damn man, I know this is 40k but if there's anyone in the cosmos who has the resources and will to move heaven and earth just to save a few people - it's a Rogue Trader. And there are characters who get absolutely ruined even if they are ruined for want of a thing you could easily acquire for them... You just can't because no dialogue options for it written
Do I complain too much? I hope not. It's a fantastic game. I spent like over 120 hours in my first playthrough. It's one of those things where it's harder to articulate what makes a game so good when everything about it is so good, and the things that suck are just a few things that hammer you in the face. I love the game, really